Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA)

Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Spanish Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, also called Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, until June 2009 Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas,
regional bloc, organized in 2004, that aims for social, political, and economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. ALBA, which means “dawn” in Spanish, was conceived by Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez and was created by Venezuela and Cuba as an alternative to the U.S.-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas; ALCA). The leaders of the member countries—Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela—hold annual summits to discuss initiatives and strategies for the region.

ALBA’s main goals are to alleviate poverty and to promote socioeconomic reform through trade agreements that meet each country’s needs, rather than through the neoliberal, or free-market, economic policies that dominated the region’s economic planning and growth strategies in the 1990s. To that end, the ALBA Bank, a regional bank with its headquarters in Caracas—the Venezuelan national capital—was created in 2008 to channel money to development projects throughout the region. Moreover, in 2009 the leaders of ALBA agreed to create a regional electronic currency, the sucre, to reduce the use of the U.S. dollar among ALBA countries. (The currency’s name was both an abbreviation of Sistema Único de Compensación Regional [Unified System of Regional Compensation] and a reference to South American independence leader Antonio José de Sucre, a compatriot of ALBA’s own namesake, Simón Bolívar.) Other longer-term plans have included the implementation of regional literacy and health care programs, the creation of an arbitration court, and the establishment of a united military force of ALBA members.

Essentially, supporters of ALBA found its programs to be worthy alternatives to the economic policies of many international lending organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Critics of ALBA, however, accused it of threatening stability in the region and of disrupting existing alliances, including Mercosur, the Andean Community, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).